And at Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin’s steak fry Sunday, Biden will be among friends – people who know him not because he’s the nation’s number-two elected official and who don’t refer to him as “the vice president” or, back in the day, as “Sen. Biden.”

To many activists in this state, which Biden has courted on and off for nearly 30 years, he’s just “Joe.”

More than perhaps any presidential candidate in modern times, Biden has cultivated a set of relationships in Iowa – and that other key primary state, New Hampshire – that date back decades, to his first presidential campaign in 1987.

That race ended abruptly, when Biden dropped his candidacy amid a plagiarism scandal and the start of the Robert Bork hearings in Washington. But in the intervening years, Iowa Democrats and veteran Biden allies say he has worked hard to maintain his friendships in the state, and not merely for political reasons.

He developed genuine bonds during that first campaign and renewed them in his 2008 race, which ended in a disappointing fifth-place Iowa finish. If Biden seeks the presidency a third time in 2016, his friends in Iowa say they’re prepared to saddle up again for a man who has become more than a political candidate to them.

“He has literally – as he would say, literally – touched just about every Iowan there is,” said Teri Goodmann, a Dubuque Democrat who has stayed in contact with Biden since his ‘87 effort. “Joe is a person to hold your hand or touch a shoulder, or share an emotion. Joe is a known entity in Iowa.”

Former Delaware Sen. Ted Kaufman, who was Biden’s finance director in the ’88 race, predicted of the steak fry: “So many people will come to that event because they’re friends with him, and I mean outside-D.C. friends.”

“He has relationships with people. Jill has relationships with people. Valerie has relationships with people,” Kaufman said, referring to the vice president’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens. “He’s gone out there for people’s funerals.”

The vice president’s Iowa following underscores, in some respects, what an unusual politician Biden is in the year 2013 – a political moment dominated by politicians who rise quickly and burn out fast, and whose essential skill is typically mass communication through TV and social media.

On the contrary, Biden is a retail campaigner of the old school, a man who embarked on his political career before the advent of cable television and whose longevity in national politics sets him apart from even Hillary Clinton among the possible 2016 hopefuls. His first major campaign appearance in Iowa was at a Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in the autumn of 1985.

Indeed, looking at Biden’s original Iowa team is like sending a gang of prominent Democrats from the 21st century back through a time warp. His 1988 state director was David Wilhelm, later chairman of the Democratic National Committee under Bill Clinton. Obama-Biden media consultant Larry Grisolano was, at the time, Biden’s Iowa field coordinator. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and his wife, Christie Vilsack, were youth organizers.

The Iowans Biden has known for most of his adult lifetime speak of him as a recurring presence in their own lives, including at deeply intimate moments. Judy McCoy Davis of Des Moines, who worked on Biden’s 1988 race, said Biden’s contacts in Iowa are far more “two-sided” than those of most aspiring presidents.

In her own case, Biden sought out McCoy Davis during a visit for former Congressman Leonard Boswell ahead of the 2008 campaign. After dining with a small group, Biden gave her a “pep talk” about how to go on in life without her late husband, former Des Moines Mayor Arthur Davis, another Biden ’88 alum.

“He really wanted to talk to me about the fact that he knew what it was like to lose a spouse,” recalled McCoy Davis, who said Biden’s longest-standing supporters in Iowa often reassemble for his visits. “Almost everyone [can] talk about the very personal ways that he stays in touch. It’s less about the political side of things than it is just the interest in what’s happening with you.”

For another friend, McCoy Davis said that Biden went far out of his way when her friend contacted his office ahead of a trip to Washington: “She gets a call one night when she’s doing dishes and this voice goes, ‘Hi, it’s Joe.’ And she says, ‘Joe who?’ Well, it’s Joe Biden. ‘I hear you guys are coming out, why don’t you stay with us?’ And she did.”

Democratic organizer Sharon Holle of Davenport, who will be traveling with the Biden team during the visit Sunday, said she sees the vice president “whenever he comes through Davenport,” and knows there are other Iowans who stay with the Bidens or dine with them in Washington.

“If you work with him, if you work on his campaign like I did, they make you part of their family. And they tell you right away: ‘You’re a Biden,’” Holle said. “It’s amazing the stuff he can remember about so many people. It’ll knock you over – ‘How’s your dad? How’s your mom? Are they still teaching?’”

Holle said she’ll certainly sign up for a Biden 2016 campaign, if there is one, though she also acknowledged: “They have a lot of Hillary supporters here, too.”

Some Democrats in the Biden circle, both in Iowa and nationally, express impatience about the rush to interpret his every move in the context of a possible presidential run, even a visit to such a politically consequential state. His affection for Iowans is real, they say – his former Senate colleague Tom Harkin not least among them.

And if there’s a tone of optimism throughout Biden’s Iowa fan club, about his ability to make good on decades’ worth of attention to the state, there’s also a recognition that politics, and the Iowa caucuses themselves, have changed in that time.

The Democrat who first ran with a message aimed at rekindling the youthful idealism of the Kennedy years, in a campaign memorably captured in Richard Ben Cramer’s legendary political tome, “What It Takes” (Ben Cramer highlights Biden’s ’88 refrain: “Just because our heroes were murdered … does not mean the dream does not still live …” ) will have a lot to prove in 2016 if he hopes to win over a larger, younger, more diverse primary electorate.

“Biden has a core group of close friends and supporters in the state. Many of them were on board in 1987. I think they will certainly be ready for him if he should go again,” said Iowa-based Democratic strategist Jeff Link, Harkin’s former campaign manager and chief of staff. “But, the caucus turnout has grown a lot since the ’88 cycle and the VP will have to add significantly to his base to be successful in ’16. He could do it, but of course Hillary’s decision will have a major impact whether she decides to run or not.”

On the other hand, Biden could have financial and organizational strengths in 2016 that he lacked in either of his previous runs – the trappings of the vice presidency, plus a grassroots fan club that his former campaign manager, Luis Navarro, credits to Biden’s upbringing in small-state politics.

“It’s not only the fact that he’s built a relationship over presidential campaigns 20 years apart, and now in his role as vice president, but it comes as a direct function of his experience in Delaware,” said Navarro, who managed Biden’s 2008 bid.

Navarro reflected: “The major thing in 2008 was that he demonstrated that despite having spent his career in Washington, and the negatives that are often associated with that, he still had the common touch that a lot of people feel that Washington politicians lose over time.”